Mastodawn

This is something I'll never be able to wrap my head around, and I've watched it proliferate in the furry fandom for years now.

FNAF creator Scott Cawthon has a history of donating heavily to almost exclusively Republican political candidates, including the loathsome and disgusting Donald Trump. His anti-LGBTQIA+ stance is just as repugnant and toxic as that of JK Rowling, yet the fanart of Cawthon's characters continues apace, with no sign of ever abating.

The furry fandom (with the exception of some repulsive outliers) has a history of supporting the LGBTQIA+ community and issues important to its survival and societal comfort. Am I to understand that, just because there's a bear, fox, and other characters some find appealing and/or sexy, Cawthon gets a pass?

It's like furries that go out of their way to eat at Chick-fil-A despite the fact that the restaurant's owners not only donate to anti-LGBTQIA+ causes, but bankroll poisonous legislation at home and overseas, including laws that make being queer punishable by prison or execution.

I've even seen fanart of FNAF characters waving pride flags! It just comes across as hypocritical to me. I'm not one to apply puritanical rules or guidelines; I really am a live-and-let-live kind of person. BUT when it affects essential human rights, or eliminating them for a specific group, that's where I draw the line. I personally think we, as a fandom, can do better.

R. K. Niner Jun 17, 2025

@cashewlou The frustrating part is hearing how many excuses people make:

"Oh, he retired and isn't involved anymore" - he still owns the IP and gets royalties

"I was watching a stream and he donated [insert amount over $10K] to [insert LGBT charity]" - first off, almost every online payment platform rejects payments that large...

"He apologized!" - saying you're sorry everyone else was offended is not an apology

Compact Fluorescent Tube Jun 17, 2025

@cashewlou I don’t just think we can do better, I think we MASSIVELY undervalue and underestimate the organizational force we could be if we harnessed our community towards these ends.

We are an absolute force to be reckoned with, and I don’t think we know it as well as those who hate us tend to.

K.T.Jun 17, 2025

@cashewlou I think you are making slightly unfair assumptions about the members of our community. For isntance, I didnt even know the name of the FNAF creator till now! I find it easy to imagine that others dont either, and if they do, its quite possible that they dont know his politics. Especially as Rowling has made herself an outlier in being so publicly bigotted.

I think I understand what you're trying to do, but it can also look like like you're judging people for what they do not know, and that is not kind.

Draco Jun 17, 2025

@cashewlou I think it's probably fine to take his characters as long as you never buy anything.

Terith Jun 18, 2025

@cashewlou He shouldn't get a pass, no. I give him leeway because I've never seen him directly disparaging the community and he's seemed supportive in the past. I can give a vague benefit of the doubt that "the dumb christian conservative" thinks he's doing the right thing with his political donations and is just misguided and wrong. Otherwise, lack of fandom outcry is largely the result of him not publicly being the kind of asshole Rowling openly is.

tragerotica Jun 18, 2025

@cashewlou The silver lining here is that you do see FNAF characters with pride flags and in all kinds of queer situations. Just goes to show that an artist looses control of their work the moment they release it. If even disney isn't immune, a single bigot has no chance.

Desert Jun 18, 2025

@cashewlou Isn't that one of the most radical things though? You have artists in support of the LGBTQIA+ community liberating IP from someone who is against them and turns the message 180 degrees in support of the community. The creator of FNAF doesn't see royalties on fan art / the sale of fan art anyways, yeah?

snowpaw Jun 18, 2025

@cashewlou
The ethical stance of Furries is mostly vibe based.

They only tolerate or at best accept gay people because they are those themselves.
Their stand on kinks reveals that it is mostly self serving for a lot of them.
Do I like it? It's good!
Do I dislike it? Ban the sick filth!

Topics of race, gender, sexuality are primarily uphold to distract and spilt up groups of people and establish hierarchy.

Without a proper way of thinking and analysing this kind of stuff, the fandom will break apart in tiny bits, thinking of themselves above the others ... until they get murdered by fascists.

"But I am not one of the perverted. They are!" doesn't work with plundering murderers.
You enforced the hierarchy, so you get eaten by it.

Rejax Jun 23, 2025

@cashewlou I remember some people I knew years back. We were at FWA and people were eating at the chickfila there and I was complaining to my group about why would furries eat somewhere that wants to outlaw most of us basically... and their response was to say they wanted to eat there now??

Cashew Lou Jul 2, 2025

@Rejax That's, um...that's beyond fucked up.

Luna Lactea Jul 5, 2025

@cashewlou The furry community seems to be obsessed with "good vibes only!!!! no pawlitics!!!!!" & I hate it. This is supposed to be a community that's accepting of "weird" people, such as gay people & transgender people, but there's so much blatant hate towards LGBT people. It's always something small, like whenever someone points out that Scott Cawthon is a horrible person & maybe we shouldn't be buying his games they say "um ok well I wanted to play it, I don't care" or making fun of you for questioning your gender, but it's always there.

Luna Lactea Jul 5, 2025

@cashewlou I don't see this with older furries at all, I've never seen an older furry exhibit this behavior, it is exclusively the younger furries that make up most of the furry community. I don't think this is me being juvenoid, because I don't think this is because they are younger. It seems like there's a pattern with the idea of furries becoming more mainstream & more & more of this behavior being tolerated; fewer people are here for the funny animals & eachother & more people are here for the parties. The mainstream view of furries is not funny animals & gay people, it's parties & wealth status symbols, & the mainstream is just shallow like that.

Luna Lactea Jul 5, 2025

@cashewlou Mainstream culture is unfortunately tolerant of that behavior, so when something comes into mainstream that behavior is introduced so much that it can't be fought anymore, because there are now so many people engaging with something that they don't know what it's really about that you can't possibly teach everyone. We can't show everyone what furries really are & what it means to be a furry, so they must make up their own meaning, so they choose to clone the mainstream culture they already know & put it in a fursuit & the racism, homophobia, shallowness, & fixation on wealth comes with it.

Luna Lactea Jul 5, 2025

@cashewlou I don't think we should "keep furry weird" or push away new furries that have never been taught that discrimination is bad actually, but I think we need to do better. Alot of furries are too anxious to confront someone, so it's difficult to correct bad behavior or get rid of the people that won't get better, but we still have to try. It should get easier to confront people for being bad the more you do it, & when someone learns better & understands they will be helping too.

Can we not eat at Chick-fil-A? They keep lobbying against my right to marry using the money made from food sales, so it would help me if you didn't give them any money. Can we not buy Harry Potter stuff? J.K. Rowling uses money earned from the franchise to attack my UK friends' right to live, so it would help if we didn't give her any money. Can we not promote Five Nights at Freddy's? Scott Cawthon donates money earned from it to politicians that want to send me to a concentration camp.

Luna Lactea Jul 5, 2025

@cashewlou It's frustrating to have to beg people to be aware of their surroundings & come out from under their rock. my dude they are making it illegal for me to hug my boyfriend punishable by death

They need someone to teach them to be better people though, it's not their fault that no one taught them to think critically or to vote with their wallet. The furry community can be as good as it used to be by providing that education. It used to not need it because every furry already knew that stuff, but now there are people that don't know that because it's a bigger community now. Some people don't know, some people think it's not real if they don't look at it, & some people are actually awful. There are ways to handle each case.

Sometimes I don't want to be a furry anymore because of it, but I've felt better since I stopped using social media where those people are present. Now it's easier for me to call out that behavior when I see it because I'm not overwhelmed.

Vormy the Vulpes Sep 24, 2025

@jackemled @cashewlou

(directed at both @ mentions)

i share similar frustration with furries' general eagerness to use and encourage others to use #telegram. an app that seems to openly pander to nazis with 1488 dogwhisles in promotional screenshots, and grok integrations, and CK mourning.

but because u can make cutesy sticker packs, people love it.

Luna Lactea Sep 24, 2025

@foxbutt @cashewlou It says alot about furries that know about all of that & use Telegram anyway. They're almost always horribly toxic people or their only friends are horribly toxic people & they can't escape. Signal, Discord, & even Matrix allow you to make & use sticker packs, so the stickers excuse people always use is ridiculous.

Vormy the Vulpes Sep 24, 2025

TBH, as someone who might have just had a falling out with someone who knows but doesn't care, i am inclined to agree that they are toxic.

I personally don't like signal or discord but at least "pandering to nazis" i not an issue they have. I use matrix. it has its issues but it works alright. stickers are very janky. clients seem to do em differently. but they are personally not my thing anyway.

Luna Lactea Sep 24, 2025

@foxbutt It's definitely a Telegram furry thing in general. I have had too many bad experiences with them & no good experiences at all.

Telegram is awful as a company & the app is unsafe to use in very many ways, Discord is kind of bad & has horribly unreliable software, Signal requires a phone number but is otherwise very safe & very nice, & Matrix is a cool idea but poorly executed with a few vulnerabilities & the Matrix Foundation is horribly mismanaged. All of them have stickers & they all mostly work. Stickers are a feature of all modern instant messengers (Telegram is not included in "modern instant messengers" lmao), so it's a bad excuse.

Matrix could easily be much better than it is now if the Matrix Foundation would get its shit together.

Vormy the Vulpes Sep 24, 2025

@jackemled agree with your assessment of the 4 messengers. Tho i also really hate discord for its role in replacing forums and enshittifying the internet. No longer can i lurk on an easily searchable forum to find what i am looking for. TG has that same issue tho. i guess the others do too but people arent using them as forum replacements.

but yeah ive had bad experiences with more than 1 tg fur. tho have met some cool people.

Vormy the Vulpes Sep 24, 2025

@jackemled for context i used to use TG. someone made an account for me. but i was not comfortable so i deleted it and it seemed the group i was in celebrated me leaving once i was gone.

but i did meet some cool people. those being the ones i now chat with on matrix.

Luna Lactea Sep 24, 2025

@foxbutt I agree, but I don't think we can blame them for some people using the wrong tool for the job.

Vormy the Vulpes Sep 25, 2025

@jackemled true... to an extent. i havent used it since 2021 but if i recall, i think more recently discord did add forum like thread features.

still i agree its not the fault of the company for how the users use the product. if they use it not as intended. but that might not be the case anymore.

Luna Lactea Sep 25, 2025

@foxbutt I think they added it in response to people complaining that it's not a forum. It's still bad because it's not accessible though. You still have to have an account, have a device that the app works on, be in the same "server", & have permissions to view it.

Vormy the Vulpes Sep 25, 2025

@jackemled exactly. the accessibility is the issue. also i appreciate the quotes around "server" because i hate that they call 'em that. i much prefer to say 'chatroom'. even their internal documentation referring to them as "guilds" is better. it at least fits with the "how do you do, fellow gamers" aesthetic they used to have.

sakurastar_verified

@cashewlou I'll be honest. Fanart, I don't care about it.

Scott isn't benefitting from it other than fans who either don't know Scott's politics or they do know, but already owned the games and are just reliving Nostalgia before learning Scott was a douchecanoe.

Plus, a lot of the fan art is 90% lewd fanart anyway. I tend to imagine that kind of thing gets stuck in Scott's craw knowing his fans are a bunch of furverts.

sakurastar_verified

@cashewlou and the pride flag thing? Yes it's a little hypocritical. However at the same time, I also see it as sticking in Scott's craw as well because you know he wants to scream yell and bitch about it like every other rich Republican that wants to ruin their reputation...

But he can't because he knows, if he does, he's going to end his career permanently. He ain't Elon Musk or JK Rowling and made those ultra bucks to survive the aftermath.

sakurastar_verified

@cashewlou however I will agree, if you know about Scott's politics and you do not own the games, don't buy them.

If you really want to play them, pirate them, or if you know someone who already owns them over steam or through gog, see if they will send you a copy or let you do a steam share to share their library with you.

If you already own the games? To late to do anything about that. Play them or don't.

sakurastar_verified

@cashewlou anyway, my real point is this, look at Pepe the frog, how a once innocent cartoon frog got corrupted by 4chan into a hate symbol?

Take Scott's creation and in Scott's eyes corrupt it into a symbol of nonconformity and sexual perversion. Make it so that law makers attempt to ban his games because they are turning their kids from perfect little Republicans into commie liberal furverts.

They like to take symbols from people.

sakurastar_verified

@cashewlou play that game right back and take their symbols away from them.

ms_neurodiversity

@cashewlou i am a transfeminine person who also happens to have a weird autistic hyperfixation on fnaf. every time i talk about it on fedi, i always add a disclaimer, reminding people of what scott did, and reminding people of not giving money to him, which is why personally i don't support the franchise financially at all. i just watch old videos about fnaf and so on because it's comforting for me.

that being said, these last few weeks i've been thinking about this, actually, and i do find it quite puzzling that people just immediately forgot and moved on. seeing popular video makers make videos about the new games and so on... it's... uncomfortable for me. it's a hyper-fixation of mine, but it's one that leaves me with a very bitter taste in my mouth, and... yeah. i have very, very, very mixed feelings about this.

Rycochet Jul 7, 2025

@cashewlou 'I for one support LGBTQ+ rights and my character in VR chat is non binary and wears a pride flag tank top, I'm so glad I bought Meta's top of the line Oculus VR headset from Amazon so people can really appreciate my support for my community. People on X say I'm crushing it!'

Lots of principled people with strong principles in the fandom, that evaporate the second they might interfere with gettting new toys and braghing rights.